We Hear You! Letters from Our September 2013 Issue

I particularly related to the section about her difficulty being a Republican in Hollywood. My wife and I are Scott Brown Republicans here in Massachusetts, which has been controlled by the Democrat party for years. I admire Ms. Harmon's courage in the face of incredible odds. I feel the same pressure--and abuse--here, to bow to liberal ideology. We did not vote for Obama and are constantly reminded that we are racists/homophobic/biggots for liking Mitt Romney. To quote Ms. Harmon: "It's bizarre to me that the so-called tolerant party can be so intolerant."

Thanks again for allowing Ms. Harmon to speak. I know there are many more women out there who have something important to say and are being shut out of the conversation for political reasons. Scary, huh?

Sincerely,--Peter B. Robb

Thank you for your recent and thoughtful piece on Sharon Wilson. She and I have known one another for a long while and worked together on fracking issues around the world. Your article helps portray her as the committed and selfless advocate she is, and I deeply appreciate your efforts to illuminate for you readers the challenging and controversial issues surrounding the oil and gas issues currently and increasingly facing our nation’s communities.

Best regards,--Lisa Bracken

Hi there!

I’ve been reading More since the first issue and have subscribed for almost as long. Needless to say, I love the magazine! In the latest issue I was delighted to see parts of two article directly address those of us who have been with you that long – the 60s crowd. I realize you can’t cover every age group but sure appreciated those items.

Wishing you another successful 15 years--Sue Cotter

Dionne Ford’s article moved me to tears.--Anonymous

Great job on the Lauren Hutton spread! She is my peer (over 60), adventurous but classic, and I love every item she is wearing. Perfection!

Thanks for giving attention to the over 60 woman! I'm sure there are many of us who still have style and want to continue living every day we have left to the max!

I also appreciate the tone of the facebook page, which is positive, inspiring, encouraging, and enjoyable.

Thanks,--Sally Miller

I've enjoyed More magazine for over 20 years and three name changes and still enjoy every issue at age 75! You always speak to me.

Thank you for your wonderful magazine.--Victoria

I love love love More! I look forward to reading the magazine cover to cover on my iPad each month. Just finished the September issue and am disappointed by your Blipp technology. I want to be able to just click on a picture or article to access, don't want another app that I have to launch to get the info. I think you've missed the mark.

Two cents! Will still read but won't use Blipp.

Cheers!--Annette Lovitt

Lesley,

I have never taken the time to write to a magazine editor but I am very disappointed with the decision you have made to extend your demographic.

I do not want to read articles that are relevant to my thirty year old daughters. Instead I loved a magazine that focused on women later in life and their issues. I want to see fashion that is appropriate for a sixty five year old. I want to know if affordable health care will change medicare. I want to find out how to cure sleepliness brought on by menopause. My daughters have a million magazines focused on them. Your older readers only had one.--Anonymous

Hi Lesley,

Don't neglect those people in their 60's -- I know it's not a selling point for your publication, but we are still here and also are buying products!--Karen Meler

Lesley, with being new to MORE, I found your letter very contradictory on the cover "What to wear at 30,40 50" then in your letter "It celebrated all things 40 - plus and rules were pretty rigid. I ordered this magazine being in my 60's and would have preferred "What to wear at 40,50,60".

Share Your Thoughts!

Comments

I am African-American. I am well over 50, and by ancestry still have black/brown hair, just now obtaining maybe 4-5 strands of gray hair in my entire head. (People, ignoring the various natural variation in strand color, wrongfully insist it is dyed but my mixed ancestry grandmother did not gray until her 80s! I am told people of African descent gray the latest.) Anyhow, due to allergies I don't want to dye my hair lighter, so I baffled how to look younger according to the advice you give, namely to wear a lighter hue. I do have highlights put in every spring. Likewise, having a very sensitive scalp, I must wash my hair at least three times a week, and certainly after my fitness sessions. I a lucky to have abundant hair, because a "weave," which cannot be shampooed that often and suffocates the scalp, would not work for me. Also, because extensions and weaves are so very popular now among Black women, I am aware that many of us are risking our health by avoiding exercise and shampoos to maintain "weaves." I notice that the restyled already younger black lady in your article on anti-aging hair looks was told she should shampoo her hair bi-weekly to maintain her extensions. At a time when obesity is high among American women, no woman of any ethnicity should be told to get extensions unless she has suffered hair loss due to medical issues. Just to look younger. Shame!

Fear of breast cancer, how far would you go? I tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, leaving me with an 87% risk of developing breast cancer. Most likely the very aggressive strain Triple Negative that my sister recently battled. I'm three weeks post double mastectomy, hysterectomy and reconstruction and was very interested in this article, when I turned to it and saw the insensitive graphics of a woman's torso with holes where her breasts belonged, my daughter took the magazine and ripped the article out stating "you definitely don't need to read this!"
I have no idea if the article was insightful, empathic or even valid, I do know that with such a sensitive subject you could have made a better choice of graphics. I hope you'll never have to make or live with such a difficult choice. For me the decision was easy, I knew I wasn't strong enough to go through 5 months of wicked chemo treatments and the ensuing side effects plus a double mastectomy, hysterectomy and reconstruction with the grace my sister has. So I was grateful to have the option of surgery before cancer. As it turned out, my post surgical pathology discovered pre cancerous cells that indicated my surgeries were in the nick of time. I feel so lucky and thankful, but emotionally, the decision to remove my breasts has been devastating. To open your magazine and see that torso with holes was nauseating.

I'm a little behind in my reading so I read October's issue at the gym this morning. I was irritated to a 33-year old in your 2013 selection of women. As a magazine that is supposed to address women over the age of 40, she's much too young! Are you changing your philosophy? I sincerely hope not because you are one of the few magazines that speaks to a women in her sixties who is still active. Stop showing me youngsters when there are fascinating older women!

It appears that women stop living/aging after age 50? Your latest magazine "How to Age Well"....says 30's, 40's, and 50's. I am a 67 year old woman who is a Sophomore in college, because I wrote about my life of overcoming (and thriving). i am a dancer, singer, author, poetess and Vietnam era veteran...an over comer and wounded healer. I am working like a "Trojan" to bring about awareness of verbal abuse; it is so prevalent that it goes unnoticed. 1 in 3 women will be physically assaulted in their lifetime and it all begins with verbal abuse. This is a pandemic. I want to speak on National Television about this "shredding of souls."---I presented my paper at the Michigan Counseling Association (Society's Hidden Pandemic: Verbal Abuse, Precursor to Physical Violence and a Form of Biochemical Assault. I challenge you to help me educate the public, and help me make a difference in the world. I am an amazing vibrant woman on a mission. carleton@oakland.edu is my e-mail if you would like to contact me, and use my story. you would be helping women everywhere. Sincerely, Alice Carleton, over comer, wounded healer. P.S. Some of my endorsements for my book: Elie Wiesel, Wayne Dyer, Nikki Giovanni....I am humbled and honored.

I want to add another comment about the sliding age issue. Today I saw the cover of Ladies Home Journal and it had almost exactly the same topic: "How to look good at 30, 40, 50!" How disappointing…. Please return to your original mission.

First of all, I have thoroughly enjoyed nearly every article I read in More. I was a charter subscriber to Lear and was sorry it ended. So I am generally happy with More.
My biggest complaint is that you seem to be moving your age features to a younger and younger focus. The September cover trumpeted what to wear up to age 50! I am 69, soon to be 70 and I still care very much about your subject matter. You also stated in an editorial that you will publish the age of your featured people. This seems to be intermittent. Please remember that we older woman are still vital and interested in looking and feeling well.

Another long-time reader disappointed by the decision to broaden your demographic(women in their thirties have PLENTY of magazines.)I feel betrayed! And not very interested in your current offerings. You can't be everything to everyone, please consider returning to your 40+ demographic.

I love your magazine, the content is so interesting and informative. Well done! Now can you do something about your trite covers? Angie Harmon is gorgeous, but as a reader I find the cover format to be the same as all the other "women's" magazines out there and MORE is, well...so much MORE! Can't you do something more artistic and intelligent that is more reflective of your readers? The cover is just not representative of what MORE has to offer!

I am writing to express my dismay at More's decision to cater to 30 year olds. I have been a believer/subscriber to this magazine from the beginning, and have shared with many friends, and I am SO disappointed I hardly have words to express myself. I loved More magazine and what it represented.
There are PLENTY of magazine for 30 year olds. I felt like I had graduated into a special "club" once I hit 40, and appreciated the idea of a magazine DEDICATED to women over 40. I don't care if thirty-somethings feel "excluded" from the club: Heck yea! They're 30! They'll earn their membership eventually! Nothing stopping them from buying the magazine anyway, just like I can buy Seventeen magazine if I want too - but now look what's happening; September's cover "What to Wear at 30..."! Really! So using precious pages to cover young womens attire (as though they couldn't get their fashion advise in a dozen other publications)instead of an actual article that may pertain to those of us in the over 40 club - who have supported this magazine from the beginning - is a better use, to make a better magazine?! NO! (And I'm not really a fan of the fashion articles anyway - things are so high dollar when there are plenty of well made, less expensive, options available, but that's another topic. Just using this as an example of thirty-somethings stealing copy from me).
You are making the magazine too generic, too inclusive. The "Mother of More" created a magazine for "women 40-plus" to give us a publication that related to this stage of OUR lives. As Ms. Blyth said, the demographics for More were women who had become valued and valued themselves "not for their innocence, but for their experience"...And yes, as she said, we recognized and liked More's uniqueness - which you are dilluting, if not destroying. And what happens when the twenty-somethings complain they've been left out?! Why not expand on the other end of the spectrum - 70 year old coverage instead? Truly, that demographic will be expanding as we baby boomers age. And yes, as the demographer for Ms. Blyth pointed out, women are living longer, healthier, wealthier, more vital lives into middle age (30's?!) and beyond.
I am feeling cheated, as though you have opened the doors of our special "club" to allow under-aged, unqualified people in without paying the "dues" of living to 40, 50 or more...and I am feeling less desirable to More as a reader.
I feel so let down by a product I believed in. Perhaps it's all about the m-o-n-e-y...trying to get the younger subscribers on board...that's what my friends are saying. I would be interested to know the truth behind this major change: I can't accept it is just because thirty-somethings are "unhappy to be excluded" (Oh boo-hoo! Grow up already! Oh that's right, you're only 30) as stated by the editor on page 26 in September's edition.
Ah well. It has been a great 15 years. All good things come to an end. Losing my subscription and the few I generate by sharing will not hurt your bottom line, especially with all the thirty-somethings subscribing in our place. It isn't much, but ending my subscriptions is the only way I can "vote" my dissatisfaction, and so I will not be renewing. Thank you for your time. I just thought someone should know not everyone believes all change is good.
A disappointed, loyal, but now too-old-so-thrown-under-the-bus-for-a-30-year-old subscriber

I enjoy reading MORE magazine. My brand new issue came today and inside the plastic bag was inserted some ads and coupons. There was a mini-catalog of clothing from "Woman Within".Do ANY of the women who work at MORE actually wear these clothes? I know older women like to be comfortable, but this clothing was for the out of shape geriatric set, and by the way, I'm not a youngster, I just turned 60. I still like to be considered attractive and stylish. Ditch this catalog PLEASE.